Life is all about changes

I see life as a per­pet­ual chang­ing process, like a tree goes through one sea­son after another. Peo­ple, busi­nesses, asso­ci­a­tions or any other social group, they all fol­low this pat­tern over and over again. Like peo­ple, busi­nesses and groups live and die. So, although my exam­ple below talks about a per­son, you can eas­ily apply it to a group.

Sum­mer is where the leaves are abun­dant and dark green. In that phase, a per­son is in con­trol and happy with his life.

Then comes Fall, when he gets bored or uneasy with cer­tain aspects of his life. Leaves dry out, change col­ors and even­tu­ally fall one by one.

Dur­ing Win­ter, it is time for the per­son to rest, to take a step back, to plan, to learn and to pre­pare for change. On my tree, one branch has no buds and looks dead. It rep­re­sents an aspect of the person’s life, that he needs to let go. If the per­son does not “prune” his tree, the dead branch will rot and be a bugs’ nest, pos­si­bly able to spoil many, if not all aspects of his life.

Finally comes Spring, with new, ten­der, leaves (skills, goals, or even life pur­pose) demand­ing close atten­tion, so the per­son con­trols their growth and even­tu­ally shapes the tree, ready to enter a new Sum­mer phase.

Man­agers know how this cycle of change applies to every aspect of their orga­ni­za­tion: the mis­sion may need to be reju­ve­nated, a par­tic­u­lar group of employ­ees need some atten­tion, a spe­cific prob­lem needs to be addressed enter­prise wide… Coach­ing at work is a proven prob­lem solv­ing method to help man­agers to go through change with­out dam­ag­ing healthy aspects of their organization.